


Feathers

by beewinged



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mushishi
Genre: Acceptance, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Memory Loss, Natural Disasters, Nature, Science, Symbolism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-27
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-06 08:01:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1104403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beewinged/pseuds/beewinged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“You mustn’t let this happen again.”</i> <i>His mother shakes him, fingers rigid. </i><br/><i>If he closes his eyes, she will stop. If he closes his eyes, he will not be able to see the creature at his side— translucent and drifting, a jellyfish with a glowworm heart.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Fusion of _Mushishi_ anime/manga canon with the daemons of Philip Pullman's _His Dark Materials_ trilogy. As the canon is set in an "alternate" pre-Meiji era Japan, I've done my best to echo author Urushibara's cultural details and anachronisms, as well as the blend of Japanese proper names vs. anglicized names used by the manga translators.

He was a barn swallow child, before the mountainside crumbled.

 

“She looked like a Shimahebi, in the village,” he confides to his mother’s sleeve. “I wish she would stay that way.”

The woven rim of his mother’s hat obscures her face, but he can see her turtle daemon peering over the edge of her pack, watching him with one eye.

“Shimahebi can’t fly,” she pants. The path has grown rocky and steep, and she leans to take his hand. Her dark hair is painted to her cheeks with sweat, but her lips are smiling.

The air is thick with the promise of rain.

 

Sometimes his daemon doesn’t look like a bird or a snake. Sometimes it doesn’t look like a proper daemon at all.

“You mustn’t let this happen again.”

His mother shakes him, fingers rigid. If he closes his eyes, she will stop. If he closes his eyes, he will not be able to see the creature at his side— translucent and drifting, a jellyfish with a glowworm heart.

 

Daemons cannot be shaped by will or desire— they only reflect the truth. Know yourself, and the final form of your daemon should come as a revelation, not a shock or disappointment. So every child is taught.

Boars and bulls for leaders of men, monkeys for the very wise. Waterfowl and songbirds, tanuki and Shiba Inu for village folk and farmers. A man and wife might have six children settled as swallows and be proud.

A daemon should reflect one’s lot in life, one’s acceptance of life. When the daemons of young children creep on irrational legs or fly on the wings of fireside tales, they reflect ignorance. As a child learns what is possible and what is not, his daemon is confined to the possible, and grows stronger for it.

The boy is old enough to understand these things. He is old enough to share his mother’s fear. Little by little, for a few hours more with each passing day, his obedience takes the shape of a barn swallow, curious and deft-winged— a fit companion for a sojourner.

 

Yet even so, once the embers have cooled and the night swallowed up the outline of his mother’s body, the stars come out and make mischief.

The starlight shows him impossible things— ropes and motes that twitch like living beings, disturbing the air with fragile light. A river speaks from underground, its roar a swell of countless tiny bells. He is frightened and solitary and full of wonder, and his daemon shapes herself after ghosts.

His mother stirs in her sleep, and papery wings tickle his ear— his daemon, startled into the form of a moth. She stirs again and reaches, night blind, to brush her hand over his head.

“Still awake?”

He hesitates.

“I thought I saw something. In the sky.”

She strokes his hair. “Go to sleep. It’s only the moonlight in the leaves.”

 

Above their heads, thousands of jellyfish haunt the branches of trees, glittering along the River of Heaven.


	2. Chapter 2

When the mountainside crumbles, his mother grips his arm and pulls. The mountain pulls harder.

 

There is dirt under his tongue and a heartbeat in the palm of his hand: his daemon, half-drowned. He cradles her to his chest, and they both retch, coughing up mountain.

“Cold,” she shivers, and he opens his eyes.

The sky is falling.

 

Rain sluices down his neck, down his arms, clinging closer than his torn clothes. Mud puddles around his knees. Within his reach, white fingers protrude from the earth, crooked like a summons.

Maybe, if he keeps very still, the cold will turn him to stone.

 

When he opens his eyes again, another night has fallen. A sound like drowned bells draws his gaze upward, and he sees a familiar vision. His jellyfish are dancing in a line, winding above the crippled mountain path and disappearing into the trees. Because they are not real, his body rises to follow them.

He walks on bare feet, leaving a stone behind.  

 

The boy cannot remember falling asleep, but he stares up at the grey beams of a cottage roof and knows that many hours have passed.

“Don't be afraid,” says a voice from beside the hearth.

His daemon trembles against his neck. They are both covered with a heavy blanket.

“The kind that give off light aren’t usually strong enough to do you harm.”

The voice belongs to a woman. She is not a farmer, not a vagabond. Her hair is long and very white. 

“Unless--” she pauses and turns to look at him. Her face is neither young nor old. “It's me you're afraid of?”

 

The woman comes and goes without explanation, silence trailing behind her. The boy and his daemon lie still in bed, and sometimes his impossible creatures drift in through the open window. They glow against the dimness of the roof beams.

That night, he dreams of his mother. She is speaking with a stranger’s voice, a smear of mud on her cheek, and he cannot quite make out what she is saying. When he wakes, the cottage is still empty.

**Author's Note:**

> _Tsubame/Barn swallow ([x](http://www.birdskorea.org/Images/images2008/06/Barn-Swallow_TE.jpg)). Shimahebi/Japanese striped snake ([x](http://baikada.com/JSM/JSMpic/uploads/2011/06/shimahebi-normal.jpg)). Kame/Japanese pond turtle ([x](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/Mauremys_japonica_fase.jpg/800px-Mauremys_japonica_fase.jpg)). Music to read to. ([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ewe2uF6O4&list=PLC60AC8205365DF66))_


End file.
